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pigrabbitbear writes with a story about some interesting possible effects of Global Warming. From the article: "It's a good thing that robots are stealing our jobs, because in about thirty-five years, nobody in their right mind is going to want to do them. Scientists from NOAA just published a report ... that details how a warming climate impacts the way we work, and the results are pretty clear — we do less of it. NOAA discovered that over the last 60 years, the hotter, wetter climate has decreased human labor capacity by 10%. And it projects that by 2050, that number will double."

There might be work available in Texas but that doesn't mean there is work available everywhere.

I had to make an emergency still unemployed relocation across the country from FL to NM because it took a year to get a crappy Job in FL (bottom level retail crappy) and despite having no kids and relocating to the cheapest apartment I could find and cutting all possible costs that job didn't pay enough to keep afloat. After the move I was amazed when applying for positions actually resulted in responses again and had no problem getting not just a crappy job but an excellent position in my chosen profession.

Global warming theoretically might cause increased competition for resources. Increased competition for resources sometimes leads to armed conflict. Armed conflict over resources sometimes results in the US getting involved militarily. The US sometimes uses drones when it is so involved.

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that global warming definitely causes drone strikes.

A great many things. Climate changes, being a global event, will impact everything ion the globe to some degree.Well for a while, eventually the world won't be habitable. Then it won't get worse for us.

But don't worry - we who read Slashdot love one-sided skepticism like yours. The "skeptic" part makes you feel "edgy" and "counter", while the one-sidedness of your views means you're just whoring your mouth for the same old corporate interests.

Talk about a study that has too many variables to conclude something so major... How did they eliminate the effect of today's technology and culture on work ethic and demand? Among the thousands of other variables...

5 degrees isn't going to reduce overall labor by 5%, let alone 10%. And the 10% is considered with far less than 5 degrees in increased temperature.

Well, there are other studies that have concluded amazing things based on bullshit. So that's a bit more than NOTHING. Personally, I'm interested in how the study can claim labor has a temperature sensitivity of around 10% decline per degree C. That's huge. If it were true, then any sort of energy conservation via raising the thermostat in hot weather, would be greatly counterproductive.

Uncertainties and caveats associated with these projections include climate sensitivity, climate warming patterns, CO2 emissions, future population distributions, and technological and societal change.

Because this is after all, just a projection based on computer models. And we know how well they work "out of sample."---Spot on. In other words, they make a statement and then say that it could be wrong based on just about everything.

Of those variables, four are quantifiable and subject to ongoing research and the last two are the ones we can actually control if we want to change whether the outcome actually happens. So I'm not sure what's wrong with the model.

Talk about a study that has too many variables to conclude something so major... How did they eliminate the effect of today's technology and culture on work ethic and demand? Among the thousands of other variables...

5 degrees isn't going to reduce overall labor by 5%, let alone 10%. And the 10% is considered with far less than 5 degrees in increased temperature.

The actual scientific paper makes it very clear that they're making a projeciton on known metrics about heat stress and known data about tropical climate. It would take Slashdot to turn it into a straw-man like "World Labor Capacity Dropping Because of Increased Temperatures".

Why would you hope that, out of curiosity? Are you really the kind of person who would rather people made ill-informed conclusions because it offered you the opportunity to look like you're cleverer than them?

Resulting from average temperature and humidity growth, 98% people are 72% less inclined to indulge in sexual activities. Scientists from UN IPCC's climatodemography subcommittee agreed on 82%-91% less babies will be born in next 20 years than expected. 20 years after that, figure is a bit more fuzzy and goes from 86%-100% drop in new births.

A warmer climate means more food, simpler shelters, and lower energy costs. (Or they would be, without air conditioning, which is a luxury in all but the hottest places.) Where it snows, everything is more expensive, so people have to work more than they would otherwise. From a labor perspective, global warming will bring about freedom from slavery.

A warmer climate means more food, simpler shelters, and lower energy costs. (Or they would be, without air conditioning, which is a luxury in all but the hottest places.) Where it snows, everything is more expensive, so people have to work more than they would otherwise. From a labor perspective, global warming will bring about freedom from slavery.

Oh you optimist! Just like computers would mean we only would be working four hours a day four days a week by the year 2000.

The answer is obvious. Let's throw more people at the probem. We just have to make up for each persons 10% cut in productivity by putting 10% more workers out there, and paying each one 10% less. Problem solved...or something.

Breeding is unnecessary for this solution. We already have a whole bunch of unemployed people, supposedly because there's not enough jobs for them, making the market very competitive and weighted towards capital.

The punchline: this is an actual solution and not a joke, as you are treating it. In America, an eight hour day is still considered standard, and most people who manage to keep their jobs put in a great deal more work than that. This is unhealthy and exploitative, and causes the usual behavior of

I thought the whole goal of inventing machines was to make jobs easier for human beings.

Even if there is some valid conjecture behind this science, since the beginning of time, man has invented tools and machines to make jobs less difficult for man to do, thus decreasing the labor. And I know that when I don't have to work as hard, I enjoy lounging on a beach chair in a bikini soaking up the warmer weather and relaxing.

There is much more to all of this I would believe. The world's population has increased tremendously and now there are more people and less work to be done, and I'd gather that a majority of the world's population is located in warmer climate areas, this conclusion would appear to me to be conjecture....but this is just my take on it...just an observation.

Maybe the amount of work actually done in the past 60 years has gone down because of union regulations (amount of time you are able to work a day, number of breaks required to give workers), regulations against child labor, regulation of minors in the workforce, and the possibility that a lot of jobs in the past 60 years (not all mind you) have turned from factories and physical labor to offices. Many occupations have also modernized and mechanized, increasing production and decreasing the need for physical labor.

While a 1-3 degree difference in temperatures (or even 5-10 degrees if you want to get drastic) is enough to cause global enviornmental issues, I doubt that anyone is going to say "Shoot, its 73 today whereas 60 years ago it was 70, Oh, its just too hot, I can't work today". "Oh, its summer in Phoenix, its 110 today instead of 107 it was 60 years ago on this day, oh, I just can't do anything".

Really really stupid corrolation.

That is like saying the number of viewers of the Today Show has increaded substantially over the past 60 years, so we are going to say that The Today Show has got to be the most awesome show on television, and take into no account the number of households who have bought televisions in the past 60 years, the population growth, or even comparing it to the actual percentage of total viewers now versus then.

This isn't about pointing to a change and saying "this was caused by that". This is about taking what we now know about the effect of heat stress on labour output (as determined by the US military, for example), looking at the change in climate in the tropical regions, and looking at how that change in heat stress should have affected labour output, and how it should affect labour output in the future.

They've created a model based on empirical data, tested it against historical results, and projected it into the future with a testable prediction. The "climate science isn't science because it's not experimental" crowd should be here imminently.

I doubt that anyone is going to say "Shoot, its 73 today whereas 60 years ago it was 70, Oh, its just too hot, I can't work today".

It's a 3 degree change in the average across the globe and with wider variations.

It's more like in one part of the Earth "Shoot, its 10f today whereas 60 years ago it was 40f" and in another part of the world "Shoot, its 90f today whereas 60 years ago it was 70f"

But don't worry, it's only a 3 degree average increase. This last year alone, over 1,000 high temp records were broken around the world in only a 2 week period. That could easily be just a fluke, but it still doesn't make me feel any better abo

In mediterranean countries they mitigate against this by working in the early morning, sleeping for the hottest part of the day, and working until very late evening. Two four-hour sleeps suits hot climates much better than one eight hour one. I wouldn't be surprised if in a much hotter climate an 8-hour sleep in daylight and working through the night made more sense

Work slowed down quite a bit here today because there's a snow storm. So if it was 40 degrees out instead, our productivity and workload would go up. In fact, this is a landscaping company so it would go way up. So hotter places that are so hot and swampy and miserable and unbearable that nobody should be living there right now (aka Mexico, Florida, Georgia, etc) will go down in productivity but places like this will go up.

Even if the study's figures themselves may somehow be "correct", there's still the continued productivity increase per person through advance of technology - even though "labor capacity" might have dropped and might continue to drop.

Seems to be a study to give bespoke rationale for those in power to further increase work time or invent new socially detrimental measures to fight the impending shortage of workforce. While, in long term reality, increasing unemployment is the only thing to be expected.

That too many people have become lazy, narcissistic and generally so full of themselves that they think they're worth more than they really are. Add to that a group of people who blow smoke up the collective asses of these self-absorbed folk by promising them anything and everything in order to obtain and maintain power and influence.

Attention: Ship B is leaving and you need to get on board now before the Earth blows up.

Air conditioning only makes the problem worse. It may make your room cooler, by adding heat outside. In cities, when everyone runs the AC, the heat goes up and everyone cranks up the AC. Meanwhile, the additional strain on the power grid means more coal is burned and more heat generated. And not to mention all those people who have to *gasp* WORK OUTSIDE!

and a cooler climate means colder winters and more oil is burned to keep warm. and in NYC there are lots of decades old boilers that spew toxic fumes into the air after burning the oil. no one wants to replace them until they break due to costi'll take AC's and slightly warmer outside air any day over toxic smoke

The impact will be felt the most by those who work outside or in hot environments, such as firefighters, bakery workers, farmers, construction workers, factory workers, and others who will be forced to slow down due to increases in heat and humidity.

Considering our rather primitive ancestors managed to survive the last ice-age, which peaked fewer than 25,000 years ago, I'd dare suggest that, as a species, we probably wouldn't all die out if the earth experienced another one in the future. In fact, given all of the advances we've made since that time, we'd almost certainly end up faring far better than any of our ancestors did previously.

They base their finding on a climate model which like most climate models, are always inaccurate.

They also assume that at these temperatures people would be working the same hours. They could easily work at night and since there is a push with the smart grid to pay for the time of use, working at non-peak hours would save costs on energy.

This is nothing but pure speculation based on an unproven hypothetical situation to drive a political agenda. Welcome to modern science.

Seeing as the study was produced by NOAA, we do. With sequestration in the news, I wonder how many autistic children with hearing aids could have been vaccinated with the money that was spent on this study.

Somebody should invent some way to cool the air down. Think of all those poor bakery workers. Oh if only there was some sort of box you could plug into the window and it would make the air colder in the room it was in. Oh wait...

An increasingly obese America is getting too warm when it works? Good God man the temperature is up a degree, have some chips and try to last the night.

Dumbest. Report. Ever. But I can't want to see what they'd say in an ice age. Presumably "oh well, that's it, we're all gonna die then".

Who pays for crap like this?

Whoosh.
This clown's failure to grasp the big picture would be funny, if it weren't so predictably narrow-minded. So all jobs can be equated to the work of bakers who, typically, work in significantly warmer environments (we are meant to assume). Uh-huh. Sure. RTFA and try to understand that the metrics here are bigger than "output of one fat guy vs one skinny guy in a bakery".

Puerto Rico is not a country. It is a territory of the United States. It has some fringe elements who want to establish an independent country, perhaps like a few fringe elements in the American Southeast who want still want to secede in the Civil War fashion. Some people want Puerto Rico to become the 51st state, but this is also somewhat unlikely since it is an income tax haven for its wealthiest residents.

Dude, the difference is SLAVERY. All large civilizations are built on the backs of slaves...

Not, they aren't; it may be PC to say so, but it's just not true. No large modern civilization was built mainly on slavery, because slavery is just not efficient and productive enough. It's risky and expensive to educate slaves, so you can't build serious industrial capacity on slavery, their mobility as a workforce is minimal, you get lots of extra expenses for security, not to mention motivation.

Even in America, where slavery was much more prevalent and lasted more than in most other world powers, the productivity of the industrialized North (based mostly on immigrant labor) was far ahead of the productivity of the slave-owning South. Look at the 1850 census, especially here http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1850c-06.pdf [census.gov] (table CXCV, on page 11) to see how the gross manufacturing production of non-slaveholding states dwarfs the GP of slave-holding states. Though the difference isn't as great, the agricultural production (http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1850c-05.pdf) AND productivity was also larger in the North.

Of course, this doesn't mean the slaves didn't contribute, or had it easy, but, if you really want America to have been build on somebody's back, that back would belong to the immigrant laborer.

The statistic mentioned by/. in their synopsis is very misleading. It implies (to me at least) that world total labor capacity has decreased by 10%, but the NOAA study is just stating that when it is hot out, people tend to be 10% less productive.

If that's true, I have some nifty data to throw in.......

When temperatures exceed a certain limit with humidity at a certain point (dewpoint), they issue a Heat Advisory or Heat Warning. In each warning, they advise people to drink lots of water and to, GASP, take more breaks in the shade!

Wait, so are they saying that their warnings are actually working?

Oh, wait, that only includes the U.S. My central logic processor is overloading and using adrenaline to cool. This sort of report pisses me off! lol

When temperatures exceed a certain limit with humidity at a certain point (dewpoint), they issue a Heat Advisory or Heat Warning. In each warning, they advise people to drink lots of water and to, GASP, take more breaks in the shade!

And when you're taking more breaks, you're doing less work. If you spend 10% more of your time drinking water or taking breaks, you think that might have an effect on your productivity? If you don't do those things and you collapse from heatstroke, do you think that might have an effect on your productivity?

Read up on the history of United Fruit if you want to know about heat and labor.

Awesome, so there is no such thing as global climate change? I'll let you tell the turtle that holds our flat earth disk in space while the sun revolves around us. Maybe all of our humors are out of balance too.

I've never actually met or read anyone who argues that climate doesn't change. In fact, that was one of the original criticisms of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming as a hypothesis: climate changes, and the current/recent climate differences do not appear to be outside of normal ranges. But, you know, nice straw man and mockery and all.

"Even IPCC head Pachauri admits [wattsupwiththat.com] no warming for 17 years."false. That has been thoroughly debunked.

It amuses me..angers really, that someone would dispose of the work from 1000's of experts from around the globe, through out all the collected data, but trust some yahoo website.

Do you even know how to think?At this stage in out body of knowledge about this issue, people lie you are right up there with anti-vaccers, 911 conspiracy cranks and bigfoot believers.

The worse part is that we can still do something about it pretty cheaply, all thing considered, but it gets more expensive every year.Out of the last 10 years, 9 of them have been the warmest on record. Yes, even after homogenization of the data sets.That's not debatable. It's a fact.

The 10th one was in 98.17 of the top 20 warmest were in the last 20 years.

Are we looking at the same article? The one I'm looking at has graphs - including NOAA graphs - that support the GP's point that mean temperatures peaked about 2003 and even dropped a bit in the past couple of years.

I was ready to agree with you, but you've actually given me pause for thought.

You know, the setting the top 9 global record temps in the past 10 years type stuff

No warming for the past 17 years? Every year has been warmer than the last for the past 30 years in a row. We really don't have enough long term data to tell if this is a normal cycle, but why chance it? There are small simple things that can be easily done to help reduce green

You've never actually worked outside in the South in the summer have you?There was a reason it was sparsely settled and all the work was done by poor farmers/sharecroppers, and slaves.There is a reason little manual labor or hard outdoor work is done in the middle east, particularly during the middle 6 hours of the day.

Humid locals get more humid.Dry locations get dryer.

Raise the temp just a couple degrees and the max humidty may not change (hard to go over 100%), but it duration sure as hell does. To the p

In fact, some models consider the effect of that humidity not going down over night and show it has (or can have; depends on location and replenishment) the effect of drying an area out, cause the water vapor doesnt get reabsorbed into the local environment. IE, desertification.

And in other models, a drying atmosphere causes a drying biosphere, because of, y'know, equilibrium. Seeing how the Sahara has desertified during the period of time that saw massive ice accretion on Antarctica (3+ miles now!) during

I understand that the topics won't be able to adapt to the loss of outdoor working days by time shifting them to the winter, but it seems to be a pretty even swap for the temperate climates.

Also, it seems that in cold climates like Canada and Scandinavia, they will have a net gain of outside work days.

Or am I being too optimistic?

Yes, too optimistic. Warming is not a "swap "- global warming is destabilising the climate, leading to more violent ups-and-downs, like hurricanes and blizzards. In the case of Scandinavia, a global warming could mean constant heavy rains, which reduces the outside work days a lot. In Canada, warming can mean violent ice storms and draughts. It is not so much the warm peaks that are the problem but that the average temperature is changing and causing temperatures to be distributed differently.